Collecting RFCs

Requests for Comment (RFCs) are the
standards of the Internet. They began in the spring of 1969, when
the ARPANET was under construction. RFC 1 (“Host Software” by
Steve Crocker) is dated 04/07/1969.

For over a decade, I have been acquiring RFCs. I own several
boxes and file drawers full of them. For the most part, they are
one-sided xeroxes or laser prints. The former were copied from
friends' copies; the latter, sucked from the IETF's web site and
printed out.

This is actually quite unsatisfactory, largely because I tend
to drop pages on the floor or shuffle them about and eventually end
up with hundreds and hundreds of loose sheets that require many
hours of resorting and replacing in folders.

Thus, when I heard about a plan to put a number of the RFCs
relevant to IPv6 into paper-bound volumes, I was quite excited.
I've now seen nearly a half dozen of the books, and I'm still
excited. However, I have a problem with the series, so I'll come
clean on things before going any further.

I wrote forewords to two of the volumes, and wrote both the
introduction and made the selection where a third is concerned. So
I am not exactly pure as the driven snow where the books are
concerned. But in my defense, I must point out that I did these
reprehensible things because of the perceived value of the
collections.

The series is edited by Pete Loshin, and he deserves lots of
gratitude for executing the project. The books are published by
Morgan Kaufmann. Individual details follow.

The first volume I saw was the Big Book of IPsec
RFCs (ISBN 0-12-455839-9). IPsec is the Internet
Protocol Security Architecture; the book is made up of 23 RFCs
which relate to it. In fact, if you are interested in Internet
security or security in VPNs (virtual private
networks), this book will be indispensable: it is the ultimate
reference on the subject. The RFCs contained are:

1320. MD4 Message-Digest Algorithm

1321. MD5 Message-Digest Algorithm

1828. IP Authentication using Keyed MD5

1829. ESP DES-CBC Transform

2040. RC5, RC5-CBC, RC5-CBC-Pad and RC5-CTS
Algorithms

2085. HMAC-MD5 IP Authentication with Replay
Prevention

2104. HMAC

2144. CAST-128 Encryption Algorithm

2202. Test Cases for HMAC

2268. Description of RC2(r) Encryption
Algorithm

2401. Security Architecture for the Internet
Protocol

2402. IP Authentication Header

and a dozen more (2403-2412, 2451 and 2631).

Loshin might have written a bit more himself, rather than
just compiling the material. But the material is there. And there
is an extremely dense index, which means implementors will easily
locate what they need.

The second volume, the Big Book of World Wide Web
RFCs (ISBN 0-12-455841-0), contains 19 RFCs ranging from
1630 (which defines URLs) to 2718 (which defines new URL schemes).
They literally cover everything that has been standardized for the
Web.

Volumes three, Big Book of Internet Host
Standards (ISBN 0-12-455844-5), and four, Big
Book of Internet File Transfer RFCs (ISBN
0-12-455845-3), are the two for which I wrote the forewords. The
former contains 11 RFCs (ranging from Jon Postel's 768, “UDP”, to
1127, “A Perspective on the Host Requirements RFCs”, Bob Braden's
succinct and insightful “informational” document), but
not:

A host is a host from coast to coast<\n>
and no one will talk to a host that's closeUnless the host (that
isn't close)is busy, hung or dead.

FTP is one of the two “original” protocols. The first mail
programs were “saddlebags” on FTP. The latter book contains 21
RFCs, running the gamut from 906 (“Bootstrap Loading using TFTP”)
to 2640 (“Internationalization of the FTP”).

The volume I did is Big Book of IPv6 Addressing
RFCs (ISBN 0-12-616770-2).

Future volumes will concern LDAP, BGP and Terminal Emulation
RFCs. It looks like a fine series to me. But, as I said, I'm
prejudiced.

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